A Positive Approach to Technology

Posted on by Society for Classical Learning

“Today, there’s a new elite schooled in an entirely reconstituted classical education…. [These students] stuck on the dark side of the new media digital divide will be as out of luck and out of touch as those who cursed Johannes Gutenberg as an agent of the devil when that first printed Bible came off the press in 1452.”

— Richard Rapaport, Edutopia.org.

According to progressives, the ferocious pace of technological advance changes all the rules. They believe that an education holding to old traditions is worse than useless; it’s negligent. Success in the modern world requires a “new literacy;” students need new skills, new tools, and new norms.

Are the progressives right? Will classically trained students be as out of luck in the new world as those who cursed Johannes Gutenberg? Of course not! Our students cannot only survive the digital age, they can lead it. Well- prepared students can bridge any divide, but we must keep our wits about us!

But keeping our wits is difficult. Modern technology frightens us, especially as we see it motion- blurred by rapid change. It’s like watching a bullet train speed past our platform. Even if we wanted to get on, we couldn’t catch hold now–not without having our arm ripped off. So why even try?

Thankfully, things aren’t that bad. Yes, our gadgets evolve at breakneck speed, but humans haven’t changed since Adam’s lips first touched the apple in Eve’s hand. Men’s tools may change constantly, but the purposes for which they create those tools never change. Man will always be man, and a classical education’s cardinal goal is to train humans to be good humans, not good gadget operators.

This principle directs our approach to teaching in the digital age. Change is constant, but so is the virtue required to survive it. The greatest challenge our students face in the digital age is not acquiring basic technical skills. Any student with a modest amount of self-determination– and who can read–can teach himself these skills in a long afternoon. No, the greatest challenge our students face
is acquiring wisdom. After all, even if I can type at 400 words per minute, what good is that? The critical question is “What will I type that quickly?” Will it be a ceaseless stream of narcissistic drivel (in 140-character chunks), or will it be something of weight and consequence? From this perspective, classical educators do not need to change anything in order to prepare their students for the digital age. We’re already preparing them. If the rapid change of technology requires anything of us, it requires wise decisions based on stable principles. And cultivation of wisdom is the very soul of our education.

Yet wisdom is not merely apprehending timeless principles; it is also willing and acting according to them in concrete circumstances. We cannot, therefore, ignore advances in technology. Specifically, we cannot shun the Internet. More than any other advance, the Internet is pervasively altering our modes of communication. Man’s nature hasn’t changed, but the Internet is a constantly changing space in which man acts. We can call it the “virtual world” or the “digital world,” but whatever its name, it’s a new and distinct circumstance that warrants the attention of prudence.

On the positive side, the Internet grants us unprecedented access to each other and the archived corpus of human writing, and this access is growing all the time, but this is only the beginning. Take for example the humble search tool. Never before have men been able so quickly and precisely to search the contents of the great human library. Oh, without a doubt, danger lurks in this tool. Google can indeed make us dumb; Socrates condemned books for the same reason. The Internet can become “an elixir not of memory, but of reminding,” offering “the appearance of wisdom, not true wisdom.” But, like books, the Internet can also make us much wiser. Our choices make the difference. As with the Great Books themselves, we should plunder the Egyptians.

On the negative side, because the Internet is a new and changing space, we cannot simply assume that students growing up in the digital world will “just know” how to live in it well, any more than we can assume that students growing up in the real world will “just know” how to live in it well. Yes, mere exposure teaches them to manipulate the tools of the digital world, but not how to do so wisely. They might be able to fix a computer, but they don’t know how to behave on Facebook, or search responsibly, or how to handle the Internet’s dangerous mix of freedom and anonymity. It’s like knowing how to work a car’s gas pedal without knowing wise driving habits. Simple experience can teach the former; another person must teach the latter. Which, incidentally, was Socrates’ point about books as well.

Free men–virtuous men–must be others-focused, not self-focused, and this is what Christian classical education cultivates in our students’ hearts. But students need practice in order to learn virtue, and we cannot depend on our students to draw the connection between virtue in the real world and virtue in the digital world. We need to provide guidance and opportunities for them to practice. That means using technology, particularly the Internet, in our curriculum. Of course, this will also help our students reap the great benefits of wise use of the Internet.

Please understand me! I am not arguing for touch- typing classes in the second grade or for a computer lab at every school. Nor am I arguing for integrating Facebook into your class. I’m simply arguing against absolute negation of technology and arguing for a considered, realistic, and positive approach to using technology in our schools. It is a part of our world, and we cannot ignore it, nor should we want to, since there is so much good to be gained from it.

Part of a realistic approach, however, means carefully counting the cost. I do not believe we should go on a shopping spree like progressive educators who hope that owning fancier gizmos will resolve their snowballing failure. Instead, we need to weigh our educational goals, our teachers’ time, and our school’s budget against the cost of buying technology. Sacrifices must be made, and I firmly believe in sacrificing flashy hardware over precious time in class or salary dollars.

Ironically, many educators overlook the most significant costs of technology: time and training. Even if your institution can afford a fleet of new computers, you must consider the time it will require to secure and maintain them. More importantly, you must weigh the cost of initial and ongoing training, especially for your teachers. If you neglect training, any money you spend will be wasted. If your teachers do not know how to use technology virtuously, how can they train the students to do so?

Practically, however, many institutions can avoid large investments in hardware. Most of your students already have their own computers or have access to one at home. So you don’t need to buy computers. Instead, when it’s time to teach responsible search skills, have students bring their own devices to class, or use only one computer (perhaps the teacher ’s or a student volunteer ’s) and do small group tutorials. A teacher who knows what he or she is doing, both with the technology and with the assignment, is more effective than one laptop per child.

Clearly, the most important factor is teachers who know what they are doing. Administrators, we need to train our teachers, and, teachers, it’s time to stop excusing your refusal to learn by complaining about technology’s harmful effects. You must lead by example. Show your students how to be excellent students and learn to use the tools virtuously yourselves. Only then will you be able to teach your students to do the same.

Finally, if we think creatively, we can find ways to kill many birds with one stone. Our teachers need training and so do our students. It makes sense to bring these two together. Again, you do not need a computer lab. Instead, recruit a tech savvy parent to offer after school workshops and advertise them as BYOC: Bring Your Own Computer. The basic skills can be taught in hours, so a few weekend courses can accomplish a lot, and the conversations you can have about technology’s role in our lives will be invaluable.

The good news is that a classical education will prepare students to lead in the digital age. Indeed, a good classical education meets students’ greatest need: the need for wisdom. Yet we cannot assume that our current curriculum is sufficient. If we believe in practicing virtue in all areas of life, we must practice it in the digital world as well. Incorporating technology into our curriculum does not require us to give up our principles. On the contrary, it is our unique principles that compel us to incorporate technology wisely.

Labor Omnia Vicit: Cultivating Vines and Minds In An Online Great Conversation Course

Posted on by Society for Classical Learning
Assume the role of an online student as Joanna Hensley leads you through a discussion of Virgil’s First Georgic (have your copy of Virgil’s Georgics with you, theνDavid Ferry bilingual edition, if possible). In this presentation, you will see a demonstration of online tools such as chat box, webcam, and microphone used to facilitate deeply meaningful classroom discussion. During the Q&A, you can finetune best practices for teaching literature in an online classroom in a way that builds classroom culture and makes the most of distance learning.

Joanna Hensley

Joanna Hensley has been teaching Latin and literature online since 2007. Active in classical education for over a decade as a teacher, writer, and conference speaker, Joanna has published several chapters in the Veritas Press Omnibus series, which forms the backbone of WHA’s The Great Conversation courses. Inspired by her own high school Latin teacher, Joanna studied classics and art history at the University of Minnesota, double-majoring in Latin and Classical Civilizations and graduating with honors. A pastor’s wife and a homeschooling mom, Joanna lives in Adelaide, Australia, with her husband Adam, who is a professor of Hebrew and Old Testament theology, and their five children. Joanna enjoys reading, road trips, and finding ways to make difficult subjects a pleasure to learn.

The Rhetoric of CCE Online

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Recent developments have forced upon us the question of doing CCE online. Can it be done? Can it be done well? Is it even compatible with the classical understanding of education and it’s primary methodology of Trivium-driven learning?

Tom Vierra

Dr. Tom Vierra is Director of Academics at Wilson Hill Academy and a teacher of Great Conversation, Rhetoric, and Logic courses. He holds a Ph.D. in Philosophy from Arizona State University and has taught in classical education for fourteen years, the past six entirely online. In addition to having taught courses in classical literature, philosophy, writing, history, logic, and rhetoric, he has also helped to start two different classical schools, which included service as Academic Dean and Assistant Headmaster. He and his wife, Tracey, homeschool their five (soon to be six) children on their small farm among the beautiful rolling hills of middle Tennessee. Tom and Tracey share a love of Dickens novels, great books on education, and anything that Wendell Berry writes.

Classical Considerations for Computer Programming

Posted on by Society for Classical Learning

Is it enough to hope that we have formed students well enough for them to engage with technology responsibly? If the goal of rhetoric is to cultivate the good man speaking well, we must consider that there is a lot to say in the world of technology, and that our students won’t have a voice if they can’t speak the language. This session’s presenters will draw on their experience from starting programming courses at Regents School of Austin and make an argument for 1) why programming should be considered classical and 2) what benefits a classical school has to offer over similar courses at STEM-focused schools.

Josh Wilkerson

Josh has a bachelor's degree in mathematics from Texas A&M, a master's degree in historical theology from Dallas Th eological Seminary and a doctoral degree in math education from Texas State University. He has taught math at Regents School of Austin for the past seven years and serves as the Chair of the Mathematics Department for the logic and rhetoric schools. In his spare time, he runs the website www.GodandMath.com, which is devoted to the integration of math and Christian faith. Josh also serves on the board for the Association of Christians in the Mathematical Sciences.

Brandon Shufflebarger

Aft er working in corporate finance, Brandon seized the opportunity to join the Teach for America program, where he taught math for three years. He spent his first year teaching in the Mississippi Delta, where he led a group of algebra students to the highest test scores in the district, and his last two years in inner-city Indianapolis. Eventually, Brandon made his way to Regents School of Austin, where he has taught various levels of math and economics. Currently, Brandon is building up the computer science program at Regents, and is working as an internal soft ware developer.

Technology in the Classical School Classroom

Posted on by Society for Classical Learning

Technology tends to promote access to information for larger and larger groups of people, and contributes to the overall well-being of individuals and communities. Thus, technology is a sociological force with results that can be demonstrated, if not accurately measured. In the last 75 years, technology has been viewed by educators with narrower, but higher hopes. This session shows that professional educators tend to embrace technical modalities with somewhat utopian hopes for learning, a particularly unique sociological outcome. The data show that technology consistently fails to affect or effect learning; moreover, educators and policy makers often promote technologies in the classroom that have negligible positive effects, or even negative effects upon students. It is increasingly evident that technology is deployed in ways that are consistent with any number of theories of child development, learning, and epistemology. This suggests that technology is not leading a revolution in learning, but is, paradoxically, trailing in the wake of dominant educational theories.

John Heaton

John Heaton, BA, MA, MALS, has served since 1998 as the Headmaster at New Covenant Schools, a classical, Christian school in Lynchburg, VA, serving 465 students. In addition to his duties as headmaster, he teaches Intermediate Greek for seniors in the School of Rhetoric. He serves as one of the parish priests at All Saints Church, a traditional Episcopal parish a liated with New Covenant Schools. He is married to Heidi and has four children.

Classical Christian Education and the Future of Science

Posted on by Society for Classical Learning

Classical Christian educators are often asked how their curriculum prepares students for jobs in science and technology. History shows that while classical education prepares its graduates for any profession, it was central in the creation of modern science. Advocates of STEM education say it prepares graduates for a world where good jobs will be in areas indicated by the acronym STEM: science, technology, engineering and mathematics. Classical education, however, teaches the arts of mathematics, the quadrivium, with four different subjects: arithmetic, geometry, astronomy and music. The superiority of the quadrivium is acknowledged by those who see the need to supplement STEM subjects with an arts component (STEAM).

The quadrivium, however, is only half of classical education. The other half is the trivium, the arts of language: grammar, dialectic and rhetoric. The trivium aims at mastery of the fundamentals of language, then of logical thinking and finally of winsome and persuasive discourse. The arts of language are essential for anyone who wants to participate actively as a citizen in governments with consensual institutions. Citizens need to be able to think clearly and express themselves grammatically and persuasively. The narrowly pre-professional STEM curriculum ignores this important vocation. Furthermore, even if it were to be true—which is not proven and not likely—that all good jobs in the future will be in STEM areas, many of these will involve using language. This includes teachers, researchers who must write grant proposals for committees of scientists with other specializations, and writers who explain the significance of the results of scientific research to non-scientists. A STEM or even STEAM curriculum without mastery of the arts of language is a recipe for personal frustration and national disaster.

Classical Christian education is not only useful for those looking for STEM jobs. History indicates that it provided the intellectual environment in which science prospered. From the invention of science by the ancient Greeks and its development under the Roman empire, during late Antiquity and the Middle Ages and on into the early modern and modern age until the middle of the twentieth century, science has been associated with classical culture and classical education, in fact, for most of this period, with classical Christian education.

Let us limit ourselves to the modern period. Marie Boas Hall called the first period of the Scientific Revolution The Scientific Renaissance (1960). She showed that modern science began with Renaissance humanism, the cultural initiative to re-establish contact with classical antiquity. Renaissance humanists discovered, interpreted and translated ancient texts, including Greek scientific manuscripts. They studied ancient science, corrected its errors and misconceptions, and then made new discoveries.

Renaissance humanists had classical Christian educations. Peter Dear in Revolutionizing Science: European Knowledge and its Ambitions, 1500-1700 (2009), after discussing medieval science, goes on to explain the classical curriculum, trivium and quadrivium. The classical curriculum taught the arts of language (trivium) and mathematics (quadrivium) so students could speak, think and compute. They revered the past as the source of beauty and truth. Michelangelo promised in his contract that his Pietà would emulate the beauty of ancient art. Machiavelli’s Discourses on Livy’s First Decade ransacked the Roman republic for ways to restore freedom to Italy. Protestants like Luther and Calvin tried to reform the church by reading the Bible.

Sixteenth century scientists had the same classical education as other Renaissance humanists. Science then was self-consciously a return to the ideas and texts of ancient science. Copernicus (1473-1543) knew that he was reviving the heliocentric hypothesis of Aristarchus of Samos (third century BC). His book did not start from scratch, but was
a careful revision of Ptolemy’s Almagest (second century AD). The great doctor Andreas Vesalius (1514-64) devoted years to editing the works of the ancient Greek doctor Galen (second century AD) before publishing his seminal work on physiology, On the Structure of the Human Body, in 1543, the same year Copernicus’s De Revolutionibus was published.

As Peter Dear wrote, “Like Copernicus, Vesalius presented his work as a restoration of an ancient practice; also like Copernicus, he pointed out flaws in the work of his great model from antiquity; and like Copernicus the rationale for his project emerged directly from humanist values and ambitions.”

Classical Christian education continued to foster scientific research. Johannes Kepler (1571-1630) was a Copernican who read the texts of the Pythagoreans and Plato. Like them, he believed that mathematics was essential for understanding the physical world, even when this method led him to postulate that the planets moved in ellipses instead of circles. His fellow Copernican Galileo (1564-1642) denounced him for breaking with the ancient tradition of positing circular motion for the heavenly bodies. He too quoted Plato and the Pythagoreans. Scientists like Kepler and Galileo studied geometry in Euclid’s ancient text to understand the natural world, as Plato had urged in Timaeus and Republic VII. Thomas Hobbes in Leviathan (1651) called geometry “the only science God hath seen fit to bestow upon mankind.” Newton composed Principia (1687) in Latin with geometrical proofs as part of the same tradition.

There is a wide gap between popular opinion and the scholarly consensus on the role of Christianity and the classics in the explosive creativity of the seventeenth- century Scientific Revolution. Voltaire in the eighteenth century and twenty-first century polemicists and federal judges have presented the Scientific Revolution as rejecting tradition and explaining the world as mechanical and godless. In fact, the leaders of the Scientific Revolution were classically educated Christians.

In 1938 sociologist Robert K. Merton studied the founders of the Royal Society in 1660. So many were Puritans that he hypothesized they all were. They were certainly Christians. Merton’s careful study of the Royal Society, a key institution in the Scientific Revolution, showed the “warfare” of science and religion did not exist then. In 1988 historian Steven Shapin wrote, “No historian of science now seriously contends that religious forces were wholly, or even mainly, antagonistic to natural science. When Merton wrote his thesis, that was not the case.”

The memo had not reached Judge Jones when he composed his decision in Kitzmiller et al. v. Dover Area School District (2005): “Expert testimony reveals that since the scientific revolution of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, science has been limited to the search for natural causes to explain natural phenomena.”

Scholars have continued to confirm Merton’s results. Stephen Gaukroger in The Emergence of a Scientific Culture (2006) argued that in the seventeenth century “Christianity set the agenda for natural philosophy” or science. In 2009 Margaret J. Osler agreed: “For many of the natural philosophers of the seventeenth century, science and religion—or, better, natural philosophy and theology—were inseparable, part and parcel of the endeavor to understand our world.”

Scientists then were also influenced by their study of the ancient classics. Copernicus, Tycho Brahe, Kepler, Galileo and Newton were products of classical Christian education. They studied ancient authors and could read and write Greek and Latin. Kepler and Galileo quoted Plato’s Meno and Timaeus. The atomic theory Newton used in his optics was based on Gassendi’s recovery of ancient Epicureanism. Classical Christian education shaped science then and continued to educate scientists for centuries.

Today scientists hide their faith in the closet unless they become so famous, like Francis S. Collins, that it cannot damage their careers. Seventeenth-century scientists openly proclaimed that their discoveries confirmed their faith. Robert Boyle (1627-1691), for example, discovered Boyle’s Law in chemistry. Gaukroger wrote, “For Boyle the whole point of pursuing natural philosophy in the first place is that it reveals to us the handiwork and purposes of God in a way that goes deeper than anything we can achieve by
use of natural reason.” Boyle established a lecture series to defend the coherence of science and Christianity.

The first Boyle lectures were not delivered by a professional scientist, but by England’s greatest classicist, Richard Bentley. Bentley did not see his Christian faith or knowledge of ancient authors as obstacles to science. On the contrary, he argued that Isaac Newton’s Principia (1687) confirmed God’s existence. Newton responded to a letter from Bentley, “Sir, When I wrote my Treatise about our System, I had an Eye upon such Principles as might work with considering Men, for the Belief of a Deity; nothing can rejoice me more than to find it useful for that Purpose.”

In the appendix he added to Principia in 1713, Newton wrote, “This most elegant system of the sun, planets and comets could not have arisen without the design and dominion of an intelligent and powerful being…. He rules all things, not as world soul but as lord of all. And because of this dominion he is called Lord God Pantokrator.” The classically educated Newton composed Principia in Latin with geometrical proofs to show that an omnipotent God had designed the universe. Newton shared with other contemporary scientists a confidence in the compatibility of classics, science and Christianity. (Today, of course, Newton could not teach science in public schools.) The classical Christian education that shaped scientists like Kepler, Galileo, Boyle and Newton was then and still is the best education for scientists.

Sceptics object, “Of course the greatest scientists then had classical Christian educations. All this proves is that they were educated. There was no serious alternative back then. It was only in the eighteenth century that the case for vocational training was made by men like Tom Paine and Benjamin Rush, who argued for a modern education that rejected the trivium in favor of STEM subjects (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) for a world that wanted the fruits of science and technology.”

History does not usually allow us to study events with a control group. One exception is nineteenth-century Germany with its two distinct educational paths. One path preserved the classical Christian curriculum (supplemented with more Greek) taught in the classical or humanist Gymnasium, from which students went on to the university. The other path was devoted to STEM subjects and a modern language (usually French) taught in technical high schools, from which students went on to a professional school or a job in industry. This critical mass of technically trained graduates working in factories protected by the tariff spurred German industrial growth in the generation before World War I.

The decades on either side of WWI also witnessed brilliant discoveries in Physics: the concept of quanta, the theories of special and general relativity and the development of Quantum mechanics. One might expect most important work in Physics to be done by graduates of the technical school system. Nearly the opposite is true. Max Planck, Werner Heisenberg, Erwin Schrödinger and Niels Bohr were classically educated. Einstein attended a Swiss technical high school, but he spent his first six years at a classical school, where his sister remembered his best subjects as Mathematics and Latin: “Latin’s clear, strictly logical structure fit his mindset.” Latin and arithmetic are the fundamental arts of language and mathematics found in the classical curriculum.

When Einstein published his four great articles of 1905, his editor was Max Planck, the discoverer of quanta. According to the Encyclopedia Britannica, “When Planck was nine years old…Planck entered the city’s renowned Maximilian Gymnasium, where a teacher, Hermann Müller, stimulated his interest in physics and mathematics. But Planck excelled in all subjects, and after graduation at age 17 he faced a difficult career decision. He ultimately chose physics over classical philology or music because he had dispassionately reached the conclusion that it was in physics that his greatest originality lay.” Classical Christian educators will notice that his favorite subjects belong to the Seven Liberal Arts: Latin (and Greek) grammar from the trivium, mathematics, science and music from the quadrivium. In a speech delivered shortly after Planck’s death, physicist Werner Heisenberg, also a graduate of the Max Gymnasium, said, “I believe that in the work of Max Planck, for instance, we can clearly see that his thought was influenced and made fruitful by his classical schooling.”

Heisenberg then explained how his own science was shaped by his classical education. After World War I Heisenberg was drafted into the militia. In his spare time he read Plato’s Timaeus in the original Greek. He had been bothered by the notion that the fundamental particles of nature were little hard things with irregular shapes, the atoms of the ancient scientists, Democritus and Lucretius. Recently scientists had observed light behaving sometimes like particles, but at other times like waves. In Timaeus Plato argued that nature made most sense when viewed mathematically, not physically. Plato’s advice to follow the math even when it contradicted common sense helped Heisenberg toward his discovery of the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle in quantum mechanics. As a young scientist, Heisenberg reports, “I was gaining the growing conviction that one could hardly make progress in modern atomic physics without a knowledge of Greek natural philosophy.”

Classical Christian education formed the minds of important scientists from the sixteenth to the twentieth century (and long before as well). They learned from ancient wisdom to make important discoveries. Americans should not desert a curriculum that has been successful for so long. If they do, they may learn that the relationship of classical Christian education and science is integral and that science will not and cannot flourish apart from the educational ideal and curriculum that fostered it.

Only Natural: Poetic Resonance between the Common and Liberal Arts

Posted on by Society for Classical Learning

The lengthy split on its well-worn seat and the obtuse cant of its wobbly back attested to two things. First, the frequency of its use, and second, its immanent consignment to the dumpster. A note prominently attached to the pitiful figure read: “Can anything be done to save this?” The old footstool had shown up in my lab, part science space and part old school shop, with a heart-felt, hand-written hope for help.

In no time, the old footstool had become a lesson. It was brought back to the kindergarten classroom from whence it came, where the students gathered around its decrepit form to hear a tale of what it would soon become. Glue was applied, along with some speed clamps. Sanding took place, followed by some spot fixes and buffing. Strategic woodscrews placed tension here or there where it was needed most. To top it off, a new candy coating of bright yellow paint. The restored stool re-entered service within the week, but it occurred to me that the functionality of that stool far surpassed that of its physical form alone.

For these kindergarteners, and more than a little bit for their teacher, that stool was a model of redemption, and of the liberating power of the common arts. Without a little knowledge, hope had been lost. Brokenness was beyond repair. But with a little shop savvy and some elbow grease, what was lost was made anew, and in the process, changed the way these students understood their relationship to the physical world around them.

The liberal arts were named at a time when the most important skill for freemen was to be able to participate in civic matters, which required moving beyond the concerns of simple crafts to the art of statecraft. There is no debate about whether or not the liberal arts are important for us to impart to our children today, but what if our culture has moved us so far from the experience of the real that a driving need of our children today, particularly our youngest learners, is to balance their experience in the liberal arts with a return to learning about the non-virtual world through their hands and their senses? And even more pressing: what if their education for the Kingdom demands this paradigm shift as much as their education for the world of men?
Richard Louv, in his 2005 book Last Child in the Woods, coins the term “nature deficit disorder” to describe the increasing lack of natural experience that children face today as their entertainment becomes centered around electricity-driven virtual realities1. In losing touch with the natural world, the very world which Jesus uses to frame up so many parables, our students are losing touch with the source of their physical and metaphorical daily bread. They are losing the ears by which they could hear. Jaron Lanier, pioneer of digital media, in his book You Are Not A Gadget laments that “A new generation has come of age with a reduced expectation of what a person can be, and of who each person might become” due to the de-humanizing effects of recent technological saturation2. In losing touch with a real social landscape and pursuing the fruits of vainglory, our students are placing themselves first and their neighbors second. And perhaps the most quoted of all, C.S. Lewis laments in the third chapter of The Abolition of Man that the modern aims of applied science are more akin to that of the medieval magician, who sought to bend nature to his own desires, than to the wisdom of the men of old, who sought to know nature that they may be in resonance with wisdom, with God3. In losing our humility and recasting our place in the natural world through the social imaginary of a detached, omnipotent science, are we training our students to be the wild vines in the vineyard?

We need to ask ourselves: if we teach our students in the purely modern, secular way, are we foregoing
the opportunity to show them nature in light of charity, holism, and thanksgiving? Can we develop a pedagogy that maintains the rigor necessary to become world-class scientists while also preserving a vision, not only of creation but of the practice of science itself, that is deeply in dominio Dei?

Fortunately, John Milton had an answer to these questions in 1644. Speaking squarely from the middle of the time period in which our modern paradigms about science were being formed, Milton advocated a holistic educational experience based upon the liberal and the common arts working in concert:

And having thus passed the principles of arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and geography, with a general compact of physics, they may descend in mathematics to the instrumental science of trigonometry, and from thence to fortification, architecture, engineering, and navigation…. To set forward all these proceedings in nature and mathematics, what hinders but that they may procure, as oft as shall be needful, the helpful experiences of hunters, fowlers, fishermen, shepherds, gardeners, apothecaries;…. And this will give them such a real tincture of natural knowledge, as they shall never forget, but daily augment with delight.4

Milton is advocating nothing less than a meeting in the middle between the liberal and the common arts. The trivium and quadrivium form the academic foundations, while the common arts form the “tincture of natural knowledge”, the experiences in real application, that will allow the student to become not only fully functional, but fully charitable, in the world. The lessons of the book are not detached from the lessons of the heart through the hands, and in so doing, the head, heart, and hands are united in a holistic education.

Consider this list in light of typical school settings, and it becomes clear that every discipline could be refracted through a common art. Warfare is generally precluded, but the skills of hunting could just as easily be taught by switching one set of optics for another: trade rifle scopes for cameras by creating a photography elective, and teach students how to set up for shots in the wild. Medicine makes its way into PE/Gymnastics through training in First Aid and CPR. Simulations in history class can lead to excellent experiences in trade: could your school develop an internal economy that honors the biblical admonitions to love your neighbor and avoid usury?

However, the easiest of all applications is in the science classroom. Each of these arts involves a rooted, real-world, applied understanding of physics, chemistry, biology, and/or earth science. Framing instruction in science could be as simple as hinging your curriculum on these arts and letting the information fall into place within the context of formation: as each is practiced, the science that undergirds each is explored and experienced first hand.

Three examples of applied common arts in our science program at The Covenant School are the Skills of the Tracker, multi-generational gardening, and the Ancient Technology Project.

Skills of the Tracker: Hunting Without Hunting, for Children

Our youngest learners are literally primed to make sense of the world by using their senses. These God-given gifts, meant to be used in an orderly way, are there to help them perceive the world all around.

They are also primed for narratives. Stories impart wisdom, and through them, students learn to make sense
of what they experience. Narrative frameworks set the interpretive frameworks by which future experiences can be understood.

Imagine if our youngest learners learned science not in the lab, but in the garden, where senses and story are the gateways to a whole world of experiences, and you have the essence of the Skills of the Tracker units.

These experiences run progressively through grades 1-3. At the first level, students start with a story: Owl Moon, by Jane Yolen. This beautifully written and illustrated story about a father and daughter out on a winter’s night calling in an owl frames the experiences to come. Students learn that they need to be silent, to be brave, to “make their own heat”, and to follow the lead of a mentor who knows what to do in order to be successful. Students are taught how to walk silently, how to extend their hearing with “deer ears” and to use blurred vision to capture animal movement in the visual clutter of the leaf canopy. They practice hearing bird language, and interpreting the calls that our local birds make as they forage, call companions, and flee from danger. They learn the rudiments of natural history by taking time to sketch what they see outside, and not just the big picture: sometimes they are called to pay careful attention to the tiniest objects, which reveal their complexity when not quickly passed over. Through this experience, coupled with Scripture readings that highlight and place what they see in context, students learn rigorous scientific observation without learning to see the world as something to be dominated. They graph their findings, use field guides, keep field journals, and use the tools of science, but they do not catch the narrative that says that science is there for us to dominate nature. Rather, they learn that science is a way to see God smiling back at us from the garden no matter where we turn.

In the later grades, students continue to hone their basic skills while also exploring tracking pits, the movement of the sun (and its relation to timekeeping), observing from a single spot through all the seasons, and more. As they engage these experiences, they learn the scientific facts and processes within a context that is larger than the information itself. They also learn within a framework that is inherently cross-curricular: history plugs in at every step, as well as reading, writing, mathematics, and the fine arts.

Multi-Generational Gardening: Agricultural Mentorship

In keeping with the Christian practice of hospitality and the building of community, we are taking steps towards a multi-generational approach to gardening. In a chapter of his book The Dumbest Generation called “Betraying the Mentors”, Mark Bauerlein laments the loss of mentorship in a culture of self-expression. Mentors are seen as getting in the way of expression, rather than as guides who have already walked these paths before, and are here, in charity, to share their wisdom.5

In seeking to actively undermine this cultural paradigm while also building our school community, we have asked not only parents, but grandparents, to share their expertise with our young students in our box and field plot gardens. From vegetable whisperers to flower powerhouses, we are drawing our constituents into our common space to share knowledge and to cultivate beauty. We are also actively breaking the standard school year cycle by asking our end-of-year 2nd graders to plant the corns, beans, and squash they will share with next year’s 2nd graders in their annual 2nd-3rd potlatch supper.

All of these practices refine the sense that mentorship is valuable. It can come at many different levels and in many different forms, and as such, it forms cross- connections within our community and timeframes that might otherwise go unnoticed, or simply become lost, in the hustled pace of modern living.

Ancient Technology Project: History Meets Science Meets Shop Class

Our 6th grade students finish a History unit on Ancient Greece and Rome at about the same time they finish a Science unit called Awesome Architecture, which deals with the basics of atomic physics, chemistry, and mechanics. Bringing these two units together is as simple as asking one question: How would a modern understanding of materials help us to recreate ancient technologies using authentic materials? The answer to this question involves applied science, history, and power tools.

After picking an artifact to create, say a Roman lorica segmentata, students research a historically-accurate design, trace its history, and prepare a list of materials necessary to build a working model. Students render complete rough draft plans on paper, including all measurements and expanded diagrams of engineering challenges. While they are doing so, they alternate class days between the library and the shop, where they learn the basics of tool safety, selection, and technique. Students prototype portions of their design, test them, and make improvements upon their design before crafting a final artifact for presentation to parents and other school constituents at our annual STEM Night. Their presentations not only involve their craft, but also a refinement of their eloquence: students are provided a list of questions ahead of time that they must prepare to address.

There are plenty of success stories and failures along the way. Students realize, not just by instruction but through their hands, that wood has a grain or that metal is microcrystalline by working these materials themselves. They apply their knowledge of chemistry and mechanics to devise ways to craft, solve problems, analyze failures, and improve designs, all the while cultivating the virtues of fortitude, prudence, patience, and careful observation.

Students also acquire a skill set and disposition that is lacking in our disposable culture: things can be fixed, and we have the capacity, if we have the knowledge and the frameworks of understanding, to fix. This is as liberal as you get: it frees the self from being utterly at the whim of those who know how, while coupling the knowledge of the hands with that of the heart and of the head.

This is also STEM at its best, while mitigating its worst. There are no pre-fabbed materials, virtual problems, or even the simplicity of telling a machine what to do. This is craft. It requires all the logic, all the problem-solving, plus an additional embodied element of craftsmanship that is lacking in many modern, boxed programs.

Doug Stowe, a blogger who writes “Wisdom of the Hands”, posted the following quote. It was subsequently quoted by Matthew B. Crawford as an opener for the first chapter of his 2009 book Shop Class As Soulcraft: An Inquiry Into The Value of Work.

[I]n schools, we create artificial learning environments for our children that they know to be contrived and undeserving
of their full attention and engagement…. Without the opportunity to learn through the hands, the world remains abstract, and distant, and the passions for learning will not be engaged.6

Contained within this quote are all the reasons why the common arts are resonant with the liberal arts. Without a context, we run the risk of decontextualizing what we teach, and in so doing, unwittingly perpetuating frameworks which allow for scientism to become a force within our culture. If we can reclaim some ground by re-instituting the common arts within our programs, we not only foster the best of the head, heart, and hands within our students, but we also give them a freedom that cannot be had simply by the exploration, no matter how broad or how deep, of a world of abstract ideas alone.

A Positive Approach to Technology

Posted on by Society for Classical Learning

“Today, there’s a new elite schooled in an entirely reconstituted classical education…. [These students] stuck on the dark side of the new media digital divide will be as out of luck and out of touch as those who cursed Johannes Gutenberg as an agent of the devil when that first printed Bible came off the press in 1452.”

— Richard Rapaport, Edutopia.org.

According to progressives, the ferocious pace of technological advance changes all the rules. They believe that an education holding to old traditions is worse than useless; it’s negligent. Success in the modern world requires a “new literacy;” students need new skills, new tools, and new norms.

Are the progressives right? Will classically trained students be as out of luck in the new world as those who cursed Johannes Gutenberg? Of course not! Our students cannot only survive the digital age, they can lead it. Well- prepared students can bridge any divide, but we must keep our wits about us!

But keeping our wits is difficult. Modern technology frightens us, especially as we see it motion- blurred by rapid change. It’s like watching a bullet train speed past our platform. Even if we wanted to get on, we couldn’t catch hold now–not without having our arm ripped off. So why even try?

Thankfully, things aren’t that bad. Yes, our gadgets evolve at breakneck speed, but humans haven’t changed since Adam’s lips first touched the apple in Eve’s hand. Men’s tools may change constantly, but the purposes for which they create those tools never change. Man will always be man, and a classical education’s cardinal goal is to train humans to be good humans, not good gadget operators.

This principle directs our approach to teaching in the digital age. Change is constant, but so is the virtue required to survive it. The greatest challenge our students face in the digital age is not acquiring basic technical skills. Any student with a modest amount of self-determination– and who can read–can teach himself these skills in a long afternoon. No, the greatest challenge our students face
is acquiring wisdom. After all, even if I can type at 400 words per minute, what good is that? The critical question is “What will I type that quickly?” Will it be a ceaseless stream of narcissistic drivel (in 140-character chunks), or will it be something of weight and consequence? From this perspective, classical educators do not need to change anything in order to prepare their students for the digital age. We’re already preparing them. If the rapid change of technology requires anything of us, it requires wise decisions based on stable principles. And cultivation of wisdom is the very soul of our education.

Yet wisdom is not merely apprehending timeless principles; it is also willing and acting according to them in concrete circumstances. We cannot, therefore, ignore advances in technology. Specifically, we cannot shun the Internet. More than any other advance, the Internet is pervasively altering our modes of communication. Man’s nature hasn’t changed, but the Internet is a constantly changing space in which man acts. We can call it the “virtual world” or the “digital world,” but whatever its name, it’s a new and distinct circumstance that warrants the attention of prudence.

On the positive side, the Internet grants us unprecedented access to each other and the archived corpus of human writing, and this access is growing all the time, but this is only the beginning. Take for example the humble search tool. Never before have men been able so quickly and precisely to search the contents of the great human library. Oh, without a doubt, danger lurks in this tool. Google can indeed make us dumb; Socrates condemned books for the same reason. The Internet can become “an elixir not of memory, but of reminding,” offering “the appearance of wisdom, not true wisdom.” But, like books, the Internet can also make us much wiser. Our choices make the difference. As with the Great Books themselves, we should plunder the Egyptians.

On the negative side, because the Internet is a new and changing space, we cannot simply assume that students growing up in the digital world will “just know” how to live in it well, any more than we can assume that students growing up in the real world will “just know” how to live in it well. Yes, mere exposure teaches them to manipulate the tools of the digital world, but not how to do so wisely. They might be able to fix a computer, but they don’t know how to behave on Facebook, or search responsibly, or how to handle the Internet’s dangerous mix of freedom and anonymity. It’s like knowing how to work a car’s gas pedal without knowing wise driving habits. Simple experience can teach the former; another person must teach the latter. Which, incidentally, was Socrates’ point about books as well.

Free men–virtuous men–must be others-focused, not self-focused, and this is what Christian classical education cultivates in our students’ hearts. But students need practice in order to learn virtue, and we cannot depend on our students to draw the connection between virtue in the real world and virtue in the digital world. We need to provide guidance and opportunities for them to practice. That means using technology, particularly the Internet, in our curriculum. Of course, this will also help our students reap the great benefits of wise use of the Internet.

Please understand me! I am not arguing for touch- typing classes in the second grade or for a computer lab at every school. Nor am I arguing for integrating Facebook into your class. I’m simply arguing against absolute negation of technology and arguing for a considered, realistic, and positive approach to using technology in our schools. It is a part of our world, and we cannot ignore it, nor should we want to, since there is so much good to be gained from it.

Part of a realistic approach, however, means carefully counting the cost. I do not believe we should go on a shopping spree like progressive educators who hope that owning fancier gizmos will resolve their snowballing failure. Instead, we need to weigh our educational goals, our teachers’ time, and our school’s budget against the cost of buying technology. Sacrifices must be made, and I firmly believe in sacrificing flashy hardware over precious time in class or salary dollars.

Ironically, many educators overlook the most significant costs of technology: time and training. Even if your institution can afford a fleet of new computers, you must consider the time it will require to secure and maintain them. More importantly, you must weigh the cost of initial and ongoing training, especially for your teachers. If you neglect training, any money you spend will be wasted. If your teachers do not know how to use technology virtuously, how can they train the students to do so?

Practically, however, many institutions can avoid large investments in hardware. Most of your students already have their own computers or have access to one at home. So you don’t need to buy computers. Instead, when it’s time to teach responsible search skills, have students bring their own devices to class, or use only one computer (perhaps the teacher ’s or a student volunteer ’s) and do small group tutorials. A teacher who knows what he or she is doing, both with the technology and with the assignment, is more effective than one laptop per child.

Clearly, the most important factor is teachers who know what they are doing. Administrators, we need to train our teachers, and, teachers, it’s time to stop excusing your refusal to learn by complaining about technology’s harmful effects. You must lead by example. Show your students how to be excellent students and learn to use the tools virtuously yourselves. Only then will you be able to teach your students to do the same.

Finally, if we think creatively, we can find ways to kill many birds with one stone. Our teachers need training and so do our students. It makes sense to bring these two together. Again, you do not need a computer lab. Instead, recruit a tech savvy parent to offer after school workshops and advertise them as BYOC: Bring Your Own Computer. The basic skills can be taught in hours, so a few weekend courses can accomplish a lot, and the conversations you can have about technology’s role in our lives will be invaluable.

The good news is that a classical education will prepare students to lead in the digital age. Indeed, a good classical education meets students’ greatest need: the need for wisdom. Yet we cannot assume that our current curriculum is sufficient. If we believe in practicing virtue in all areas of life, we must practice it in the digital world as well. Incorporating technology into our curriculum does not require us to give up our principles. On the contrary, it is our unique principles that compel us to incorporate technology wisely.

Words and Things

Posted on by Society for Classical Learning

As a theologian, I observe that God has prohibited images in His worship; in large measure because they are non-linguistic. Only language has even a fighting chance of facilitating a correspondence between word and world; image simply cannot do it because images contain no verbs and therefore cannot predicate anything (representative images merely represent what they represent, in varying degrees of precision; they do not and cannot predicate anything about what they represent; a hundred photographs of the Grand Canyon can only approximate, visually, what it looks like when one is present there; they cannot say a word about what they represent).

The digital revolution continues to move from language to image. The original “command line” computers were incapable of image and entirely language- based; later they became semi-capable, and the first GUIs didn’t appear until the mid-1980s, and color editions of these were around by the late 80s/early 90s, after which many “advances” became “advances” in imaging. Almost all (even Kindle, ostensibly a language-intensive device) of the newer digital devices boast improvements in imaging technologies, cameras, and imaging apps. Even cloud computing is largely intended to provide the large amounts of storage that are simply not possible on the devices as the devices themselves become smaller and smaller while the video and photography files become larger and larger. We don’t send a postcard or handwritten note from Scotland, saying, “We had a wonderful evening in the Royal and Ancient with four delightful gentlemen tonight;” we take four or five photos, Tweet or Text them, and expect people to figure out for themselves what happened. So,
at precisely the time when the relation between word and world has become largely dissolved, our technologies also contribute to the same dissolution, by encouraging image and discouraging language (and churches, ordinarily clueless about culture analysis, follow the cultural pattern by expanding their budgets for and uses of, such digital technologies).

Churches (or academic institutions) fairly commonly attempt to “reach the youth” by doing the exact opposite of what they ought to do in our cultural moment. In a moment where there is already a tenuous relation between words and the realities to which they refer, we compose hymns and choruses that ascribe almost nothing to anything else, but merely express how the (so-called) worshiper feels about worshiping. Language is frequently employed in such settings not to say something about Reality, but to say something about how the singer feels. I observed this recently when I evaluated the well-known “In Christ Alone,” which is often regarded as one of the better of the contemporary hymns. When I observed it casually I concurred in the judgment, happy that a hymn had been written about “Christ alone.” On closer reading, I have abandoned my earlier judgment. The hymn is not about “Christ alone;” it is about my being “In Christ Alone.” I had originally thought “what heights of love” referred to Christ’s redemptive love for me, until I read the words that follow: “What heights of love, what depths of peace, when fears are stilled, when strivings cease…” It isn’t Christ’s peace, fears or strivings that are referred to; it is mine.

And therefore, the first expression “what heights of love” probably refers to the love I feel for Christ, not Christ’s love for me. The next three stanzas of the hymn do indeed refer to three important “moments” in the actual life of the Incarnate Christ, summarized by “who took on flesh…‘Til on that cross…bursting forth on glorious day…” But note how rapidly they do so. Previous hymnwriters would have written an entire hymn, with six or seven stanzas about either the Incarnation, or the Passion, or the Resurrection; here, we get just four lines for each. After this, we’re right back to talking about me: “For I am His…bought…No guilt…no fear…This is the power of Christ in me…” The hymn does not sustain any concentrated attention to the work of Christ outside of me; its focus is on my being “In Christ.” The hymn is not heterodox; it says nothing untrue. But, as is true of the culture that produced it, it employs language to talk about subjective feelings rather than to talk about (much) objective reality.

To use medieval language, we have all become “nominalists,” whose words have little to do with world. The theistic refutation of Nominalism is even more important now than ever. Christian Theism is vigorously Realist, and that is so from the very first page of the Bible. Christians refer to Reality as “creation,” reflecting our belief in an intelligent Creator; for us, Reality/Creation reflects or displays the intelligent intention or purpose or meaning of the One who made it: “The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims his handiwork” (Psa. 19:1).

Further, in some prominent biblical texts that describe the process of creation, this Creator is referred to as Logos (“reason,” “meaning,” “word,” “language”): In the beginning was the Word (ὁ λόγος), and
the Word was with God, and the Word was God (θεὸς ἦν ὁ λόγος). He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him (πάντα δι ̓ αὐτοῦ ἐγένετο), and without him was not any thing (οὐδὲ ἕν) made that was made. (John 1:1-3).

The statement is comprehensive, both positively (πάντα, “all things”) and negatively (οὐδὲ ἕν, literally, “without him, not even one thing was made”). Thus, all that is has been made; and all that has been made, without one exception (οὐδὲ ἕν), is made by this God who, in his Second Person, is entitled ὁ λόγος.

This Creator, who makes all of reality that exists outside of Himself, perceives and names the reality he makes: “And God saw that the light was good…. God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night” (v. 5, cf. also vv. 8 and 10). In perceiving and naming what he makes, God recognizes and confirms his creational intent, or meaning. God perceived/saw that “the light was good” before he “called the light Day.” What was (in this case light) preceded his naming it; the reality existed before the name. For the creature made in God’s image, then, the goal of all human perceiving and naming is to approximate, as closely as is humanly possible, the divine perceiving and naming of what is actually there. That is, we are not free to misconstrue God’s creation; to perceive it differently than God does or to name it differently than God does. We are not morally free, for instance, to perceive the darkness as light, or to call it “light.”

We also note that, in the case of God, naming precedes creating; meaning precedes reality: “And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light” (and this pattern recurs through the rest of the creation narrative). Meaning/definition/naming actually precedes the existence of the created thing itself; it is not a mere interpretation after-the-fact. Before a particular aspect of what we call created reality exists, it exists in the mind and speech of God; what it is (light) precedes that it is. Note then the four-part progression: naming–creating–perceiving– naming: “And God said, ‘Let light be’…and there was light…and God saw that the light was good…and God called the light Day.” The meaning-ascribing language brackets the creation of reality itself. Before making, God expresses (verbally/linguistically) what he will make; he then makes it; he perceives that it is “good” (i.e. that it corresponds to his creational purpose), and he calls it what he originally intended it to be (in this case, “light”).

Nominalism reduces this four-part progression to two parts: the existence of something and the naming of it; but Nominalism denies that any meaning precedes existence, and therefore denies any objective truthfulness to the naming that is attached to reality. It is “mere” naming that we attribute to reality; but such naming cannot make any claims of correspondence to the actual nature of reality. For Christian Theistic Realism, by contrast, there is naming/meaning before there is created reality, and naming/meaning after there is created reality; and, in the case of God, the two namings, and the reality they name, correspond. There is a true correspondence, Realism would say, between naming and nature, between language and reality, between word and world. The truthfulness, then, of all human naming/meaning, is dependent on, reflective of, and responsible to, the divine naming/meaning. If God names/describes his creation as orderly, we are not free to name/describe it as disorderly; if God names/describes his creation as harmonious, we are not free to name/describe it as dis-harmonious.

The Christian church could (if she were perceptive enough to do so) provide an alternative view of reality by her liturgy and by the lives of individual disciples. Her liturgy contains lectio continuo, for instance, in which large portions of (linguistic) Scripture are read in consecutive order in the service. The (linguistic) Scriptures are also proclaimed in Word, and in the liturgy of the Eucharist. Her prayers and hymns provide linguistic means by which the congregation replies to God’s offering of Himself in Word and Sacrament. The whole event is highly linguistic, and in the process of being so, the event implicitly declares its confidence in language to address reality (indeed, to address Reality).

Individual disciples of Christ also express confidence in language’s relation to reality when they commit themselves to a lifelong task of understanding and obeying the will of God as disclosed in Holy Scripture. They regard as true even the abstract language communicated by Christ’s apostles, such as in Philippians 4:8, “Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there
is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.” How could we “think about” (λογίζεσθε) things that have no existence or reality? But, for Christ’s apostle, some things really are true, honorable, just, pure, lovely, commendable, excellent, or worthy of praise, and Christ’s disciples concur with Paul’s judgment.

In liturgy, education, and individual life, then, Christians should continue to regard and employ language as a reliable (though often imperfect) guide to reality outside of the subjective experience thereof. We continue, despite all the mystery associated with it, to serve the “true and living God,” who has disclosed Himself supremely when his “Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us.” Language can indeed be employed to talk about feelings; but in a culture that does little more than this, we are hardly counter-cultural if that is all we employ it for.

God is a “fortress,” regardless of how we feel about His being one (Psa. 46). He created the heavens and the earth, regardless of how we feel about His having done so. He is so holy that only saying it three times catches the weight (Isa. 6), regardless of how we feel about His holiness. His Son will deliver us from the coming wrath (1 Thes. 1:10), regardless of how we feel about that coming wrath or our deliverance therefrom.

For educators, especially, our moment requires a resistance to the various fads, trends, or technologies that obscure the relationship between word and world, between words and things: There are really no “visual learners” or “auditory learners;” there are linguistic learners, who employ all five of their God-given senses, aided by language, to name and perceive reality around them. Images, and the digital technologies that display them, can make no propositional statements about reality; only language can do so. Images may dazzle our students; images may amuse our students; but images simply make no statements about what is real or not, what is virtuous or not; what is beautiful or not; what is worthy of praise or not. “Reflection papers,” that describe a student’s feelings about a matter, cannot rightly replace descriptive or evaluative papers that describe the thing itself and/or evaluate it within a theistic framework.

Classical Schools and the Generational Struggle with Technology

Posted on by Society for Classical Learning

Perhaps the most helpful acknowledgment toward understanding the very real challenges that we face with technology is that our schools are governed and managed by Boomers II and Gen X who hire Gen X and Gen Y educators to teach Gen Z students whose parents are Gen X/Y and whose grandparents are Boomers I/II. Each generation uses, responds to and feels differently about technology, and keeping it all straight could be someone’s full time job!

An interesting read for Classical Christian Educators is What Technology Wants by Kevin Kelly. His basic message is that technology is an irresistible (almost organic) force in our culture that is neither inherently good nor evil. It is up to us to interact with and use technology in ways that genuinely enhance learning, build community and effectively further Christ’s kingdom.

But, there is within the classical mindset a natural resistance to technology – and with good reason. However, given that Gen Z has never known the relatively tech-free world that parents and educators remember, we risk relegation to irrelevance and obscurity, even the death of a movement, if we are not informed, proactive and strategic in our technology policies and practices.

This is not about content. It is about a medium. Sheer exposure to (much more, immersion in) the new technologies forms the brain differently and, if unchecked, can actually limit the ability to learn through traditional means. At the very least, technology is profoundly changing the way our students learn. Ultimately, we must choose between meeting students where they are and facing dramatically declining enrollment.

We’ve long known about learning modalities, and that different students learn best through visual, auditory or kinesthetic modes. The most effective educator will “pitch” the lesson to all three “kinds of learners” while purposefully developing all three learning styles in each student. Developing skill is as important as gaining knowledge. If we haven’t prepared the visual learner for the still predominately auditory world of the college classroom, we have failed him. A similar approach to technology must now be layered upon the many responsibilities that today’s teachers juggle.

Communication

Our schools send letters, annual reports, donor requests, newsletters, report cards, transcripts and thank you notes via US mail. Some recipients love and depend on this form of communication while others simply pile it with the bills, magazines and junk mail until it is convenient to toss it (unread) into the nearest trash bin. Teachers may send class calendars, assignments and announcements home in homework folders, but increasing numbers of two-income and single-parent families would rather read it online.

Email, phone and even text broadcasts are becoming standard, resulting in conflicting complaints of too much or too little communication and the occasional request to “take me off your broadcast list.” Some stakeholders cleverly create unique email accounts for school communications, which can then be conveniently ignored. Meanwhile, individual email communication is beginning to consume an inordinate amount of time for teachers and principals, adding to the burden of teaching and increasing the likelihood of misunderstanding and professional burnout.

Additionally, most schools are adopting administrative software and/or website portals with individual teacher blog, dropbox and calendar capabilities to manage everything from lesson plans to athletic game cancellations. Each system has its limitations, and few schools are truly happy with what they are using. “To push or not to push” is becoming the new Shakespearean expression.

How people want to receive and process their information varies greatly with lifestyle and generation. And with increasing consumerism and a struggling economy, the savvy school will endeavor to communicate with stakeholders according to their individual preferences as much as possible.

Instruction

Among the unfortunate misconceptions that conventional educators and the popular media have cultivated among today’s parents is that student access to technology in the classroom guarantees better learning. A Christian school in our area is advertising that every 4th-12th grade student is provided a MacBook, and every K-3 classroom is equipped with a SmartBoard. Really? I suspect this is more about market pressures than pedagogy, and it may be the easier route to take than educating prospective parents in the genuine educational benefits of limiting technology in the classroom.

But, the reality, substantiated by educational research, is that computers in the hands of students (especially young students) are often a distraction from learning. At many, if not most, conventional schools computers have taken the place of the film as the latest version of in-class baby sitters, freeing teachers from the burdensome responsibility of actually teaching.

Further, technology in the hands of teachers, improperly used, can also hinder learning. While, Power Point can be a tremendous teaching tool, reading slide- after-slide of sentences can be even more effective at putting students to sleep than a dry lecture alone. Worse still is the time so often wasted when technology doesn’t work. Precious minutes slip by while a teacher (or his students) fiddles with buttons and cables, hoping that something he does will help the lesson begin or resume.

But, when properly understood and utilized as a tool to enhance teaching and learning, technology can elevate instruction to a whole new level while meeting Gen Z students “where they are.” Static or dynamic projection of a live Internet feed via LCD or SmartBoard can absolutely bring Art, History, Science and current events to life. And, while “feature-length” films will bore Gen Z, a brief YouTube clip on any of thousands of topics can capture their interest and imagination. Or Air Playing an excerpt from an iBook (iPad to monitor) can turn static textbook images, illustrations and graphs into interactive experiences. And, the creative use of a website or app can demonstrate in minutes what ordinarily takes a whole class period or a field trip in some academic disciplines.

The key, as with any tool, is that technology should be one among several methods used for effective instruction. The teacher who tethers himself to the keyboard and gives up hands-on activities, class discussion, solving problems or diagramming sentences at the board, and getting outside now and then will be a poorer teacher for his use of technology. While technology might be part of every lesson, it should not be ALL of any lesson.

Student Use of Technology

Those attending last summer’s SCL conference in Charleston heard Susan Wise Bauer advocate teaching proper QWERTY keyboarding and Internet search skills beginning in 4th grade. Whether schools takes this advice really should depend on their strategic placement of “the grammar of computing” in their whole-school scope and sequence and not on pressures imposed by what the school down the street is doing. Performance data (theirs and ours) is the better litmus test as to who is providing the better education.

A general principle of skills placement is that we don’t hold a student responsible for a skill until we have taught it to them. And, once we have taught it to them, we should immediately begin to hold them responsible to use it so as not to let them fall out of practice.

Schools must first ask at what level they will begin to regularly require word processed and Internet search assignments. No doubt a processed assignment is easier to grade, but at what stage is it best for the student? The answer must take a number of things into consideration. Among them: Will word processing and/or computer searches require additional home time for assignments, leaving less time for other critical practice and study? Will penmanship and the developmental (tactile) benefits of handwriting suffer? Will students be properly supervised/ protected in fulfilling assigned tasks using the Internet? And, can you be sure who has done the assignment? These issues must then be weighed against the concern that waiting too late to teach proper computing skills will mean having to overcome bad habits formed through self teaching. If not by 4th grade, students should acquire these skills at least by middle school, and use them regularly thereafter.

And, what of smart devices and laptop computer use in the high school classroom? Again, Gen Z students may find greater efficiency with note-taking and class participation using their technology. Smart devices can double as sophisticated calculators, and run quick Internet searches – on the spot. Obviously, clear guidelines and accountability are essential; devices out in plain sight, ringers off, no texting, no tweeting, use as directed.

Frankly, we are probably less than two years away from having every high school text available as an iBook or on Kindle. Some very fine texts are already available. This could mean a huge savings to schools and families, could lighten the back pack load and, with cloud access from any computer or device, could mean never leaving the book at school. But as much sense as this seems to make, we are wise to manage every transition incrementally – learning what works and what doesn’t work for us in the process.

The same applies to another personal prediction that computer labs will soon be a thing of the past, as schools begin to provide “smart spaces” and “hotspots” outside the classroom for wireless student/teacher interactive learning. Such spaces will feel like Starbucks with a SmartBoard, where anyone can easily send his device’s image to the big screen for group discussion, problem solving or creative development. It is already the case at colleges and universities that 80% of learning takes place outside the classroom. The question for us, as K-12 educators, is can Gen Z high schoolers be far behind their college counterparts?

Abuse of Technology

Parenting is harder than it used to be. Generally speaking, few parents know what their kids’ devices can do, or what they are doing with them. And, adult perceptions aside, kids are often genuinely naive about appropriate use of their devices. Both need instruction and guidance from us as educators.

On the one hand, Gen Z kids are far more savvy about technology than their parents and teachers. They understand what their devices can do, how to circumvent parental controls and how to set up dummy social media accounts for their parents to monitor. On the other hand, even “good kids” are so desensitized by prime time television, the popular music culture and peer attitudes that language and topics which are highly offensive to Gen X parents are just “normal,” even seemingly innocent.

Our new challenge, as schools in the classical and biblical traditions, is to adjust our thoughts and actions when it comes to partnering with today’s parents. We must still be ever so cautious not to usurp parental authority. It remains the case that our calling is as schools – not parents/ families. But parents are, perhaps, more in need of godly wisdom and assistance from educators than ever before. It is more likely than not that a parent’s first hint that her child is into something inappropriate or dangerous will come from a school official who has discovered it through the regular “buzz” about school. I have always erred on the side of leaving too much, rather than too little, to parental authority and responsibility. But for those reasons stated above and a variety of others, including the necessity of preserving a school culture that honors Christ, I am embracing a pretty substantial paradigm shift for one who has spent 21 years in classical Christian schooling. I am arguing that whatever a student posts through any medium, whatever he or she says or claims to have done, should be addressed as though it occurred at school. Discipline should not be left to the parent, but should be meted out at school for the good of the student and the good of the school community.

Students should be instructed (and parents informed) regarding what is and what is not appropriate for “virtual living,” and students should be trained in the godly behavior of holding one another accountable for living appropriately in the physical and virtual worlds. This is especially important when it comes to what is said about fellow students and authority figures. Cyber bullying and publicly trashing one’s school are injurious to both the perpetrator and the victim of such behaviors and will quickly undermine a positive school culture if unchecked.

Although our focus is solidly upon our students, perhaps we need to take more seriously than ever the notion that our schools are responsible to educate many constituencies: students, teachers, board members, donors, our broader communities and (saving them for last) parents. Workshops on topics such as Internet Safety, Cyber Bullying, Social Media, Classical Learning: What the Data Say, When to Let Your Student Drive a Smart Device, etc… will be great for some. But, remembering the generational differences of your intended audience, it may be best to push and post headlines with clickable links to pertinent articles or, better yet, YouTube videos on these and other important topics. The more our families learn, in ways that are best for them to learn, the more our schools will enjoy the benefits of a cohesive community of faith and learning, both physically and virtually.